AI Engineer

Job title: AI Engineer / AI Developer - Microsoft Foundry / Azure AI
Day Rate: £350 per day - Outside IR35 / Ltd Company
Location: Hybrid - Manchester (3-4 days onsite per week)
Duration: 3 months initially
Start Date: ASAP

Role
We are recruiting an experienced AI Engineer / AI Developer to join our client's team on an initial 3 month contract, supporting the development and delivery of AI-powered applications, agents and business process automation solutions.

Working alongside a technical lead, you will take a hands-on role in building, integrating, testing and deploying AI solutions using Microsoft Foundry (formerly Azure AI Foundry).

This opportunity will best suit a hands-on AI Engineer, AI Developer, Technical Consultant or Automation Specialist with practical experience building and implementing AI solutions. You will combine strong technical delivery skills with the ability to understand business requirements and translate them into effective AI applications and automated workflows.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop AI agents, applications and automated workflows using Microsoft Foundry.
• Build and integrate AI solutions with existing business systems, APIs and data sources.
• Develop and maintain code using Python or C#.
• Configure AI models, prompts, knowledge retrieval and agent workflows.
• Test, troubleshoot and deploy AI solutions, ensuring reliability, security and performance.
• Collaborate with technical and business stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver effective solutions.
• Produce technical documentation and support handover to internal teams.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Minimum 2 years' commercial experience delivering AI solutions and business process automation.
• At least 6 months' hands-on experience with Microsoft Foundry / Azure AI Foundry.
• Proven experience building and implementing AI agents, applications or automated workflows.
• Strong software development skills using Python or C#.
• Experience integrating applications and business systems using REST APIs and JSON.
• Experience with Git, testing, troubleshooting and secure data handling.
• Ability to work independently and demonstrate examples of AI solutions personally developed and delivered.

Desirable Skills

• Azure OpenAI and Generative AI technologies.
• Microsoft Copilot Studio, Power Automate, Azure Logic Apps or Azure Functions.
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and Azure AI Search.
• Microsoft 365 or SharePoint integrations.
• Experience delivering AI solutions within enterprise environments.